Vietnam
The flight to Hanoi was obviously a success, and more or less painless. I really do not think, though, that there are many jobs worse than working as a paper-pushing customs officer -- or any bureaucrat, for that matter -- in The Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It's up there with meat-packing, in my mind.
Having spent four full days in Hanoi, and now well south of the city, I can say objectively that it is the busiest city I have visited (and yes, I have been to Manhattan). Hanoi is an assault on the senses. Saigon, we have heard, is even busier than Hanoi, and Bangkok busier than Saigon, so I suppose Hanoi will hold this title only briefly. There are a lot of factors relating to Hanoi's being busy -- a very healthy street culture is one of them -- but most it is directly related to the moto-scooter. Apparently nobody really had them fifteen years ago, yet they have now become a status symbol; one young Vietnamese boy told a friend of ours that he could not get a girlfriend until he had his 'moto.' For me it was my family's 1992 Chrysler Plymouth Voyager mini-van.
Most of what Vanya and I did in Hanoi can be done and is done by the majority of westerners that travel through: vendor-shopping, Parisian cafes, tourist sites, pho and baguettes. However there is one thing not to be missed by any of you going through Hanoi. Bia Hoi means 'draught beer' in Vietnamese (it is not a brand of beer), and is a locally brewed lager that contains no preservatives and is meant to be consumed very shortly after production. Many cafe/bars will display prominently that they serve Bia Hoi. The clientele will swell throughout the evening to the point that portions of the street are appropriated as the bar expands -- you are actually sitting at a table on the street. Anyway, the beer is .12 cents per glass, and on that night you are my friend. Quite possibly the only thing that keeps anyone from behaving improperly is the 12 AM curfew, followed 6 1/2 hours later by Voice of Vietnam state radio waking up the entire city. It is loud. As an American, I am inclined to think that the government, here, is slightly over-stepping its bounds.
(Speaking of my being American... nobody here cares. Really, they don't. I am "western" or a tourist, for all intents and purposes. The only thing of interest that has come from my being American was from a bicycle-taxi driver, who looked to be around age 40. After I told him we were American, he said "American!?! Boom-boom-boom... IRAQ! Ha ha haaaa!" Vanya and I laughed politely and paid the exorbitant fare. In general Americans have been few and far between in southeast Asia, and in all of Vietnam we have met just one.)
We interrupted our stay in Hanoi with a three-day, two-night package-tour of Halong Bay. Halong Bay is the type of place that makes an amateur photographer feel like a very good photographer. We stayed one night on Cat Ba island (the largest island of the limestone archipelago in Halong Bay), did a day-hike through Cat Ba national park, swam off the side of the boat multiple times, and were allowed fifteen minutes for "kayaking." While the scenery cannot be beat, our trip, itself, definitely could have been beat. Vanya and I paid $39 for the three-day trip Halong Bay, and, well, we most certainly got what we paid for. Very few of the promised excursions actually happened, and there was a feeling of popular discontent -- a few days more and we would have been close to a mutiny -- among everyone we spoke to throughout the trip. We were sheep, our tour guide a dictatorial pastor.
After a 16 hour, overnight train ride south, we have now spent the last two days in Hoi An, a fishing-village-turned-tourist-destination. It has nearly perfected the art of catering to western tourists in a way that is inoffensive and does not feel overly commercialized. There are some amazing restaurants, bars, and cafes, and were they to be transported somehow to the US I would think they would be extremely popular. Hoi An is known worldwide for cheap, hand-made, tailored clothing, which is more important to Vanya than it is to me. Yesterday we took a walking tour of the city's historical district, and later rented a moto (no paperwork required, unbelievably) and headed to the beach 3 miles away. Driving a moto in Vietnam, even rural Vietnam, is a bet sketchy. On the 30 minute taxi-ride into town -- and after a particularly close call with a big truck -- our driver leaned back and asked us all to please buckle our seat belts. Implicit in this statement, I suppose, is that a car crash was an acceptable, if not undesirable, outcome to our taxi ride. I didn't even have a seat belt to put on.
Today we took a half-day cooking course on Vietnamese cuisine, learning to make Vietnamese spring rolls, claypot eggplant, Vietnamese pancakes, and pineapple boat squid-salad. None of the cooking courses offered in the city had dog on the menu, or I would be explaining what to do when you're hungry and your local grocer is just too far. With few exceptions we have been eating very well in Vietnam, with some of the best food coming not from the cafes catering to westerners, but from those catering to the Vietnamese. he street-corner, portable restaurants that serve one or two dishes are also very good, however pre-requisite to eating in these restaurants is an ability to ignore things sanitary.
The uncomfortable disparity in income between tourist and resident in Vietnam is always evident. The average Vietnamese makes $60 per week, and I appear to them as a cheerful idiot, willingly imparting with (to them) small fortunes on a daily basis. Not only that, but I thank them for it. Often, the question, "buy something?" turns into the demand, "buy something!" as we walk past the shops. The "kickback" -- from hotel to taxi driver, from tourist agency to hotel, etc. -- reigns supreme, and has the unfortunate effect of making me suspicious of genuine offers from nice people (on our first night in Hanoi, Vanya and I were intentionally shuttled to the wrong hotel, told it was full before we could ascertain where in Hanoi we were, and then taken to the hotel from which our shuttle-driver received his kickback). Also amazing is the massive, all-encompassing economic powerhouse that is Lonely Planet guidebooks. While most independent, budget travelers like to imagine themselves as, well... independent, we are a mostly self-contained group. We all bury our noses in Lonely Planet, all read the same advice, and inevitably eat and sleep at the same handful of places that are recommended. It is amazing how often we run into people in Vietnam that we met, say, in rural Malaysia. This is particularly true for an area of the world such Asia, where very few of us speak the languages and therefore need guidance; I cannot hop off the train and wing it, here. Vietnamese businesses have responded by actually copying the name and signboard of those businesses recommended by Lonely Planet, further disorienting us. The worst example was a street with three restaurants called "Little Hanoi," each claiming to be the "original Little Hanoi" and "recommended in Lonely Planet."
I would write more, but our taxi is about to pull up. Today we take the train to Nah Trang, eight hours south of here. I will update soon.
Having spent four full days in Hanoi, and now well south of the city, I can say objectively that it is the busiest city I have visited (and yes, I have been to Manhattan). Hanoi is an assault on the senses. Saigon, we have heard, is even busier than Hanoi, and Bangkok busier than Saigon, so I suppose Hanoi will hold this title only briefly. There are a lot of factors relating to Hanoi's being busy -- a very healthy street culture is one of them -- but most it is directly related to the moto-scooter. Apparently nobody really had them fifteen years ago, yet they have now become a status symbol; one young Vietnamese boy told a friend of ours that he could not get a girlfriend until he had his 'moto.' For me it was my family's 1992 Chrysler Plymouth Voyager mini-van.
Most of what Vanya and I did in Hanoi can be done and is done by the majority of westerners that travel through: vendor-shopping, Parisian cafes, tourist sites, pho and baguettes. However there is one thing not to be missed by any of you going through Hanoi. Bia Hoi means 'draught beer' in Vietnamese (it is not a brand of beer), and is a locally brewed lager that contains no preservatives and is meant to be consumed very shortly after production. Many cafe/bars will display prominently that they serve Bia Hoi. The clientele will swell throughout the evening to the point that portions of the street are appropriated as the bar expands -- you are actually sitting at a table on the street. Anyway, the beer is .12 cents per glass, and on that night you are my friend. Quite possibly the only thing that keeps anyone from behaving improperly is the 12 AM curfew, followed 6 1/2 hours later by Voice of Vietnam state radio waking up the entire city. It is loud. As an American, I am inclined to think that the government, here, is slightly over-stepping its bounds.
(Speaking of my being American... nobody here cares. Really, they don't. I am "western" or a tourist, for all intents and purposes. The only thing of interest that has come from my being American was from a bicycle-taxi driver, who looked to be around age 40. After I told him we were American, he said "American!?! Boom-boom-boom... IRAQ! Ha ha haaaa!" Vanya and I laughed politely and paid the exorbitant fare. In general Americans have been few and far between in southeast Asia, and in all of Vietnam we have met just one.)
We interrupted our stay in Hanoi with a three-day, two-night package-tour of Halong Bay. Halong Bay is the type of place that makes an amateur photographer feel like a very good photographer. We stayed one night on Cat Ba island (the largest island of the limestone archipelago in Halong Bay), did a day-hike through Cat Ba national park, swam off the side of the boat multiple times, and were allowed fifteen minutes for "kayaking." While the scenery cannot be beat, our trip, itself, definitely could have been beat. Vanya and I paid $39 for the three-day trip Halong Bay, and, well, we most certainly got what we paid for. Very few of the promised excursions actually happened, and there was a feeling of popular discontent -- a few days more and we would have been close to a mutiny -- among everyone we spoke to throughout the trip. We were sheep, our tour guide a dictatorial pastor.
After a 16 hour, overnight train ride south, we have now spent the last two days in Hoi An, a fishing-village-turned-tourist-destination. It has nearly perfected the art of catering to western tourists in a way that is inoffensive and does not feel overly commercialized. There are some amazing restaurants, bars, and cafes, and were they to be transported somehow to the US I would think they would be extremely popular. Hoi An is known worldwide for cheap, hand-made, tailored clothing, which is more important to Vanya than it is to me. Yesterday we took a walking tour of the city's historical district, and later rented a moto (no paperwork required, unbelievably) and headed to the beach 3 miles away. Driving a moto in Vietnam, even rural Vietnam, is a bet sketchy. On the 30 minute taxi-ride into town -- and after a particularly close call with a big truck -- our driver leaned back and asked us all to please buckle our seat belts. Implicit in this statement, I suppose, is that a car crash was an acceptable, if not undesirable, outcome to our taxi ride. I didn't even have a seat belt to put on.
Today we took a half-day cooking course on Vietnamese cuisine, learning to make Vietnamese spring rolls, claypot eggplant, Vietnamese pancakes, and pineapple boat squid-salad. None of the cooking courses offered in the city had dog on the menu, or I would be explaining what to do when you're hungry and your local grocer is just too far. With few exceptions we have been eating very well in Vietnam, with some of the best food coming not from the cafes catering to westerners, but from those catering to the Vietnamese. he street-corner, portable restaurants that serve one or two dishes are also very good, however pre-requisite to eating in these restaurants is an ability to ignore things sanitary.
The uncomfortable disparity in income between tourist and resident in Vietnam is always evident. The average Vietnamese makes $60 per week, and I appear to them as a cheerful idiot, willingly imparting with (to them) small fortunes on a daily basis. Not only that, but I thank them for it. Often, the question, "buy something?" turns into the demand, "buy something!" as we walk past the shops. The "kickback" -- from hotel to taxi driver, from tourist agency to hotel, etc. -- reigns supreme, and has the unfortunate effect of making me suspicious of genuine offers from nice people (on our first night in Hanoi, Vanya and I were intentionally shuttled to the wrong hotel, told it was full before we could ascertain where in Hanoi we were, and then taken to the hotel from which our shuttle-driver received his kickback). Also amazing is the massive, all-encompassing economic powerhouse that is Lonely Planet guidebooks. While most independent, budget travelers like to imagine themselves as, well... independent, we are a mostly self-contained group. We all bury our noses in Lonely Planet, all read the same advice, and inevitably eat and sleep at the same handful of places that are recommended. It is amazing how often we run into people in Vietnam that we met, say, in rural Malaysia. This is particularly true for an area of the world such Asia, where very few of us speak the languages and therefore need guidance; I cannot hop off the train and wing it, here. Vietnamese businesses have responded by actually copying the name and signboard of those businesses recommended by Lonely Planet, further disorienting us. The worst example was a street with three restaurants called "Little Hanoi," each claiming to be the "original Little Hanoi" and "recommended in Lonely Planet."
I would write more, but our taxi is about to pull up. Today we take the train to Nah Trang, eight hours south of here. I will update soon.
posted by conor | 5:47 AM
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